NFL sponsor Lenovo is giving the nation’s top two fantasy football players the chance to be real-life coaches, moving them from behind the keyboard to making key player personnel decisions. Starting today at NFL.com/FCOY, Lenovo will kick off its second season of its Fantasy Coach of the Year contest, pitting millions of NFL.com fantasy players in thousands of leagues against each other. The top finalists will be flown to Arizona, where they will team-up on national television with NFL alumni captains to draft the two Pro Bowl teams.

The two finalists will then go head to head, drafting their own nine-player fantasy squads among the Pro Bowl players selected to compete. Using standard NFL.com scoring, the winner will take home the Fantasy Coach of the Year trophy and attend Super Bowl XLIX.

All fantasy coaches on NFL.com are automatically entered into the contest. Lenovo’s Fantasy Coach of the Year finalists are determined using a unique algorithm combining win-loss percentages, league championships, a difficulty-of-league index and a “quality moves” indicator – taking into account sit/start point differential. Official rules and specifics on the contest’s algorithm can be found here. Lenovo is in its third year as the official laptop, notebook, desktop and workstation NFL sponsor.

“For any fantasy football coach, the chance to take your skills from the PC to the podium is seen as the ultimate reward,” said Kevin Berman, Lenovo’s director of advertising and marketing services. “Like an NFL coach adjusting starting lineups before the game, the finalists will have to be quick and smart during the Pro Bowl fantasy draft. Looking beyond Arizona at the millions that play fantasy football, speed and knowledge are two elements we hope our products can bring to all fantasy coaches throughout the year as they successfully build their teams.”

Lenovo’s Fantasy Coach of the Year finalists will be announced after week 17 of the regular season, with the 2015 Pro Bowl selection show being held in January on the NFL Network. Along with the grand prize winner, Lenovo will be presenting weekly awards to the fantasy coaches making the biggest leaps in the overall standings. Prizes include autographed gear from Lenovo-sponsored NFL athletes.

Last year’s Fantasy Coach of the Year winner, Dalton Gauman, a then 22-year-old construction worker from Ohio, picked up Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Nick Foles off the waiver wire a week before Foles broke the NFL record for single-game touchdowns. Gauman then teamed with Jerry Rice at the Pro Bowl in Hawaii, assisting the hall of famer choose what was ultimately the winning squad. Click here for a vignette of his winning trip.

About Lenovo

Lenovo (0992.HK) (Pink Sheets:LNVGY), the world’s largest PC vendor, is a $US39 billion personal technology company serving customers in more than 160 countries. Dedicated to building exceptionally engineered PCs and mobile Internet devices, Lenovo’s business is built on product innovation, a highly-efficient global supply chain and strong strategic execution. Formed by Lenovo Group’s acquisition of the former IBM Personal Computing Division, the company develops, manufactures and markets reliable, high-quality, secure and easy-to-use technology products and services. Its product lines include legendary Lenovo-branded commercial PCs and Idea-branded consumer PCs, as well as servers, workstations, and a family of mobile Internet devices, including tablets and smart phones. Lenovo has major research centers in Yamato, Japan; Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, China; and Raleigh, North Carolina. For more information see www.lenovo.com.

1NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. LEGAL RESIDENTS OF THE 50 UNITED STATES (D.C.), 18 YEARS AND OLDER AT TIME OF ENTRY. VOID WHERE PROHIBITED. For Official Rules and prize descriptions, visit http://www.nfl.com/fantasyfootball/help/legalrestrictions-fcoy. Sponsor: Lenovo (United States) Inc., 1009 Think Place, Morrisville, NC 27560. The NFL Entities (as defined in the official rules) have not offered or sponsored this Promotion in any way.